Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

(THE CRISIS IN OUR PARTY)

R. A Few Words On Dialectics. Two Revolutions

A general glance at the development of our Party crisis will
      readily show that in the main, with minor exceptions, the
      composition of the two contending sides remained unchanged
      throughout. It was a struggle between the revolutionary wing and
      the opportunist wing in our Party. But this struggle passed
      through the most varied stages, and anyone who wants to find his
      bearings in the vast amount of literature already accumulated,
      the mass of fragmentary evidence, passages torn from their
      context, isolated accusations, and so on and so forth, must
      thoroughly familiarise himself with the peculiarities of each of
      these stages.

Let us enumerate the principal and clearly distinct stages:
1)
      The controversy over Paragraph 1 of the Rules. A purely
      ideological struggle over the basic principles of
      organisation. Plekhanov and I are in the minority. Martov and
      Axelrod propose an opportunist formulation and find themselves
      in the arms of the opportunists.
2) The split in theIskraorganisation over the lists of candidates for the
      Central Committee: Fomin or Vasilyev in a committee of five,
      Trotsky or Travinsky in a committee of three. Plekhanov and I
      gain the majority (nine to seven), partly because of the very
      fact that we were in the minority on Paragraph 1. Martov’s
      coalition with the opportunists confirmed my worst fears over
      the Organising Committee incident.
3) Continuation of the
      controversy over details of the Rules. Martov is again saved by
      the opportunists. We are again in the minority and fight for the
      rights of the minority on the central bodies.
4) The seven
      extreme opportunists withdraw from the Congress. We become the
      majority and defeat the coalition (theIskra-ist
      minority, the “Marsh”, and the anti-Iskra-ists) in the
      elections. Martov and Popov decline to accept seats in our
      trios.
5) The post-Congress squabble over co-optation. An orgy
      of anarchistic behaviour and anarchistic phrase-mongering. The
      least stable and steadfast elements among the “minority” gain
      the upper hand.
6) To avert a split, Plekhanov adopts the policy
      of “killing with kindness”. The “minority” occupy the editorial
      board of the Central Organ and the Council and attack the
      Central Committeewith all their might. The squabble continues to pervade
      everything.
7) First attack on the Central Committee
      repulsed. The squabble seems to be subsiding somewhat. It
      becomes possible to discuss in comparative calm two purely
      ideological questions which profoundly agitate the Party:
a)
      what is the political significance and explanation of the
      division of our Party into “majority” and “minority” which took
      shape at the Second Congress and superseded all earlier
      divisions?
b) what is the significance in principle of the newIskra’s new position on the question of organisation?

In each of these stages the circumstances of the struggle and
      the immediate object of the attack are materially different;
      each stage is, as it were, a separate battle in one general
      military campaign. Our struggle cannot be understood at all
      unless the concrete circumstances of each battle are
      studied. But once that is done, we see clearly that development
      does indeed proceed dialectically, by way of contradictions: the
      minority becomes the majority, and the majority becomes the
      minority; each side passes from the defensive to the offensive,
      and from the offensive to the defensive; the starting-point of
      ideological struggle (Paragraph 1) is “negated” and gives place
      to an all-pervading

      squabble[1][1]The difficult problem of drawing a line
	between squabbling and differences of principle now solves
	itself: all that relates to co-optation is squabbling; all
	that relates to analysis of the struggle at the Congress, to
	the controversy over Paragraph 1 and the swing towards
	opportunism and anarchism is a difference of principle.
    —Lenin;

      but then begins “the negation of the
      negation”, and, having just about managed to “rub along” with
      our god-given wife on different central bodies, we return to the
      starting-point, the purely ideological struggle; but by now this
      “thesis” has been enriched by all the results of the
      “antithesis” and has become a higher synthesis, in which the
      isolated, random error over Paragraph 1 has grown into a
      quasi-system of opportunist views on matters of organisation,
      and in which the connection between this fact and the basic
      division of our Party into a revolutionary and an opportunist
      wing becomes increasingly apparent to all. In a word, not only
      do oats grow according to Hegel, but the Russian
      Social-Democrats war among themselves according to Hegel.

But the great Hegelian dialectics which Marxism made its own,
      having first turned it right side up, must never be confused
      with the vulgar trick of justifying the zigzags of politicians
      who swing over from the revolutionary to the opportunist wing of
      the Party, with the vulgar habit of lumping together particular
      statements, and particular developmental factors, belonging to
      different stages of a single process. Genuine dialectics does
      not justify the errors of individuals, but studies the
      inevitable turns, proving that they were inevitable by a
      detailed study of the process of development in all its
      concreteness. One of the basic principles of dialectics is that
      there is no such thing as abstract truth, truth is always
      concrete.... And, one thing more, the great Hegelian
      dialectics should never be confused with that vulgar worldly
      wisdom so well expressed by the Italian saying:mettere la
      coda dove non va il capo(sticking in the tail where the
      head will not go through).

The outcome of the dialectical development of our Party struggle
      has been two revolutions. The Party Congress was a real
      revolution, as Comrade Martov justly remarked in hisOnce
      More in the Minority. The wits of the minority are also
      right when they say: “The world moves through revolutions; well,
      we have made a revolution!” They did indeed make a revolution
      after the Congress; and it is true, too, that generally speaking
      the world does move through revolutions. But the concrete
      significance of each concrete revolution is not defined by this
      general aphorism; there are revolutions which are more like
      reaction, to paraphrase the unforgettable expression of the
      unforgettable Comrade Makhov. We must know whether it was the
      revolutionary or the opportunist wing of the Party that was the
      actual force that made the revolution, must know whether it was
      revolutionary or opportunist principles that inspired the
      fighters, before we can determine whether a particular concrete
      revolution moved the “world” (our Party) forward or backward.

Our Party Congress was unique and unprecedented in the entire
      history of the Russian revolutionary movement. For the first
      time a secret revolutionary party succeeded in emerging from the
      darkness of underground life into broad daylight, showing
      everyone the whole course and outcome of our internal Party
      struggle, the whole character ofour Party and of each of its more or less noticeable components
      in matters of programme, tactics, and organisation. For the
      first time we succeeded in throwing off the traditions of circle
      looseness and revolutionary philistinism, in bringing together
      dozens of very different groups, many of which had been fiercely
      warring among themselves and had been linked solely by the force
      of an idea, and which were now prepared (in principle, that is)
      to sacrifice all their group aloofness and group independence
      for the sake of the great whole which we were for the first time
      actually creating—the Party. But in politics
      sacrifices are not obtained gratis, they have to be won in
      battle. The battle over the slaughter of organisations
      necessarily proved terribly fierce. The fresh breeze of free and
      open struggle blew into a gale. The gale swept away—and a
      very good thing that it did!—each and every remnant of all
      circle interests, sentiments, and traditions without exception,
      and for the first time created genuinely Party institutions.

But it is one thing to call oneself something, and another to be
      it. It is one thing to sacrifice the circle system in principle
      for the sake of the Party, and another to renounce one’s own
      circle. The fresh breeze proved too fresh as yet for people used
      to musty philistinism. “The Party was unable to stand the strain
      of its first congress,” as Comrade Martov rightly put it
      (inadvertently) in hisOnce More in the Minority. The
      sense of injury over the slaughter of organisations was too
      strong. The furious gale raised all the mud from the bottom of
      our Party stream; and the mud took its revenge. The old
      hidebound circle spirit overpowered the still young party
      spirit. The opportunist wing of the Party, routed though it had
      been, got the better—temporarily, of course—of the
      revolutionary wing, having been reinforced by Akimov’s
      accidental gain.

The result is the newIskra, which is compelled to
      develop and deepen the error its editors committed at the Party
      Congress. The oldIskrataught the truths of
      revolutionary struggle. The newIskrateaches the
      worldly wisdom of yielding and getting on with everyone. The oldIskrawas the organ of militant orthodoxy. The newIskratreats us to a recrudescence of
      opportunism—chiefly on questions of organisation. The oldIskraearned the honour of being detested bythe
      opportunists, both Russian and West-European. The newIskrahas “grown wise” and will soon cease to be
      ashamed of the praises lavished on it by the extreme
      opportunists. The oldIskramarched unswervingly
      towards its goal, and there was no discrepancy between its word
      and its deed. The inherent falsity of the newIskra’s
      position inevitably leads—independently even of anyone’s
      will or intention—to political hypocrisy. It inveighs
      against the circle spirit in order to conceal the victory of the
      circle spirit over the party spirit. It hypocritically condemns
      splits, as if one can imagine any way of avoiding splits in any
      at all organised party except by the subordination of the
      minority to the majority. It says that heed must be paid to
      revolutionary public opinion, yet, while concealing the praises
      of the Akimovs, indulges in petty scandal-mongering about the
      committees of the revolutionary wing of the

      Party.[2][2]A stereotyped form has even been worked out for
      this charming pastime: our special correspondent X informs us that Committee
      Y of the majority has behaved badly to Comrade Z of the
      minority. —LeninHow shameful! How they have disgraced our oldIskra!

One step forward, two steps back.... It happens in the lives
      of individuals, and it happens in the history of nations and in
      the development of parties. It would be the most criminal
      cowardice to doubt even for a moment the inevitable and complete
      triumph of the principles of revolutionary Social-Democracy, of
      proletarian organisation and Party discipline. We have already
      won a great deal, and we must go on fighting, undismayed by
      reverses, fighting steadfastly, scorning the philistine methods
      of circle wrangling, doing our very utmost to preserve the
      hard-won single Party tie linking all Russian Social-Democrats,
      and striving by dint of persistent and systematic work to give
      all Party members, and the workers in particular, a full and
      conscious understanding of the duties of Party members, of the
      struggle at the Second Party Congress, of all the causes and all
      the stages of our divergence, and of the utter disastrousness of
      opportunism, which, in the sphere of organisation as in the
      sphere of our programme and our tactics, helplessly surrenders
      to the bourgeois psychology, uncritically adopts the point of
      view of bourgeoisdemocracy, and blunts the weapon of the class
      struggle of the proletariat.

In its struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon
      but organisation. Disunited by the rule of anarchic competition
      in the bourgeois world, ground down by forced labour for
      capital, constantly thrust back to the “lower depths” of utter
      destitution, savagery, and degeneration, the proletariat can,
      and inevitably will, become an invincible force only through its
      ideological unification on the principles of Marxism being
      reinforced by the material unity of organisation, which welds
      millions of toilers into an army of the working class. Neither
      the senile rule of the Russian autocracy nor the senescent rule
      of international capital will be able to withstand this army. It
      will more and more firmly close its ranks, in spite of all
      zigzags and backward steps, in spite of the opportunist
      phrase-mongering of the Girondists of present-day
      Social-Democracy, in spite of the self-satisfied exaltation of
      the retrograde circle spirit, and in spite of the tinsel and
      fuss of intellectualist anarchism.

[1]Note: 
This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.

[2]Note: 
This footnote has been moved into the body of the document.